For People Who “Don’t Like Beer”

I seem to have a knack for meeting people who say that they don’t like beer. I’ve also developed something of a talent for convincing them otherwise, so I thought I’d share some thoughts about this with others out there in the hopes that you, too, can open doors for people to expose them to beers they might enjoy.

My main philosophy that I’m working from is that saying you don’t like beer is like saying you don’t like food. There are just too many textures, body styles, carbonation characteristics, serving temperatures, hop varieties, grain variations (and, within that, different roasts), and yeast effects available, which combine to create an exponentially larger number of beer tasting experiences… it’s just not believable that a person doesn’t like “beer”, as a blanket statement. In all likelihood, they just haven’t had a broad exposure to different beers, and never came across one by chance that they liked. So…

When someone tells me they don’t like beer, what I tend to really hear is that they haven’t had a beer they enjoyed, and that’s perfectly valid. So I ask them what kinds of beers they’ve tried. Most will reply with some mass-produced American Pilsener like Bud, Miller, or Coors. Others get slightly more exotic, throwing in something like Ice Beer, or Sam Adams. At this point I ask them if they’ve ever tried beers like Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Guinness, any Belgian beers, any of the Schneider beers, any British, Scottish, or Irish Ales, etc. I mix up the beers I suggest, but I’m trying to get a read on the taster’s overall experience while at the same time letting them know that there’s a huge universe of beer out there that is available to them… just not on tap at the local high-volume restaurant chain or sports bar. So far, nobody has ever said that they’ve tried any of the beers that I inquire about.

Is it the Fizz?

At that point, it’s probably safe to assume that the taster just doesn’t like American Pilseners, or perhaps Sam Adams. Let’s stick with the American Pilsener as an example, since it’s common and pretty simple to address. There are multiple things people might not like about BMC-style beers (BMC is how home brewers refer to all beers similar to Bud, Miller, and Coors). First, it’s pretty darn fizzy. Some people (particularly girls it seems) don’t like overly fizzy beers, and BMC-style beers tend to be highly carbonated when compared to most other beers on the market, with the possible exception of Lambics (which most girls I’ve ever met tend to like, because the fruit ones can be a little wine cooler-ish, without being cloyingly sweet).

If it’s just the fizz they don’t like, great! That means they don’t have a particular problem with hops. Point them at a more British-style bitter like Fuller’s, or if you want a more pub-style ale with a head that’s more creamy than fizzy, try Boddington’s. Both are good beers, inoffensive, but of decently high quality. From there, you can move on to get more adventurous – the point initially is just to let them see that it’s not all beer they don’t like, it’s something about a beer, or a particular beer that they’re not fond of.

More about fizz

Beers are carbonated beverages. As such, they have bubbles. However, both commercial and discerning home brewers who keg and carbonate their beer tend to keep a close eye on just how carbonated their beer is. Carbonation can be done with carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen, or a mixture of the two called “beer gas”. The cans you see in stores that are equipped with “widgets”, like the Guinness Pub Draught cans (and bottles), are carbonated with nitrogen. Nitrogen forms bubbles that are far smaller than CO2, and it forms a head that is more creamy than fizzy. This can have a dramatic effect on the overall body and “mouth feel” of a beer, making it feel distinctly less watery in some cases than beer carbonated with CO2.

Outside of the handful of different beers available in the US with nitrogen widgets (less than a dozen brands are available, in my experience, between Philadelphia and New York), all other beers are carbonated with carbon dioxide (CO2), and the level of carbonation is measured in “volumes of CO2″. Breweries obsess over insuring that the level of CO2 across their various batches of beer is perfectly consistent. Since most of them (there are exceptions) inject CO2 into the beer, it’s a pretty simple thing to regulate. Even home brewers can purchase a CO2 canister and regulator inexpensively from a welding supply shop or online brewing supplier and carbonate their beers as much or as little as they like.

I mentioned that there are exceptions: some breweries (like Sierra Nevada, for example) do not inject the CO2 into the beer. Also, home brewers who do not keg, but instead bottle their beers, do not inject CO2 into their beers. What they do is known as ‘bottle conditioning’, and it’s a way to naturally carbonate the beer after it is in the bottle. It’s beyond simple, really: yeast produce CO2 in addition to alcohol. Before beer contains any alcohol, it is known as “wort”. Yeast is added to the wort, and it eats the fermentable sugars, and produces CO2 gas and alcohol, and creates what we know as “beer”. Once the yeast have done their job, they fall out of suspension to the bottom of the tank, but this is never a 100% proposition. There are always some yeast still in suspension, so when home brewers bottle their beer, they also add a minute, and measured, amount of sugar for the yeast to eat. They cap the bottle, the yeast eat the sugar, give off CO2, and since the bottle is capped, the CO2 has no choice but to be absorbed into the beer, carbonating the beer.

When you see “Bottle Conditioned” on a bottle of beer, it means that yeast in the beer created the carbonation, not a tank of CO2. In most if not all cases, you wouldn’t really know the difference between a beer that was bottle conditioned and one that was injected. On some bottle conditioned beers, looking at the bottom of the bottle, you *might* see just a tiny ring of residue. It’s mostly vitamin B compounds from yeast that have fallen out of suspension during conditioning. It’s perfectly safe to drink, and some even insist on pouring it into their glass, but be forewarned that this stuff has the potential to give you some horrific gas. Usually, only home brewed beers have enough residue to cause a problem. Commercial brews contain far less residue. Especially Sierra Nevada, who seems to have perfected the science of bottle conditioning beer without leaving a trace of residue in the bottle. Genius.

Is it the hops?

Though it’s hard for me to believe, some people don’t like the flavor of hops. No problem!

There’s more than one way around this:

Try a beer that doesn’t rely on hops for its flavor

Try a less hoppy beer and drink it very, very cold

Try beers that use more interesting hops

Not all beers rely heavily on hops. For example, Guinness, and most other traditional Irish stouts (Murphy’s, Beamish, etc) hardly use any hops at all compared to something like Sam Adams. Also, Hefeweizens have very little hop character to them at all. In addition, both stouts and Hefeweizen styles offer up flavors resulting from interesting grains, ester-producing yeast strains, and sometimes mysterious brewing processes, that tasters might like! My mother-in-law is a noted beer hater, and said that when she was in Dublin and more or less forced to drink Guinness, she found that it was not nearly as disgusting as some of the pilseners that made up most of her beer drinking experience.

How many times have you heard someone say “I like beer, but only if it’s extremely, extremely cold”. As a former bartender, I can tell you that people have asked me multiple times how cold my beer is. Most of the time, people who insist on the iciest of ice cold beer are trying to let the icy coldness hide some of the flavors in the beer they find undesirable. In BMC-style beers, it could be some of the corn and/or rice adjuncts used in the brewing process (these beers do not pass the German Beer Purity Laws, in spite of the heartfelt mottos on their labels), or it could be the hop flavors! As much as I am *NOT* an advocate of drinking beer ice cold (specifically because you can’t taste it), if you’re at a party and all they have is beer, try to sneak a bottle or two and put them in the freezer for NO MORE THAN 10 MINUTES. It’ll be freezing cold, but if you leave it in there any longer, the bottle will very likely explode as the CO2 gas expands beyond the bottle’s abilty to contain it.

I take no responsibility for results of you trying this bottle-in-the-freezer trick. I have, myself, exploded bottles of beer in my freezer. Note, too, that beer never freezes hard like ice at normal freezer temps. It typically just gets syrupy. So don’t think you can wait for it to harden and scrape it off. It’s messy. Deal with it.

Finally, the other option is to drink beers that use more interesting hops. There are tons and tons of hop varieties out there. Over 100 to be sure. Matt and I have been brewing for years, and are still coming across hops we’ve never even heard of, let alone brewed with. We recently brewed with Simcoe hops, and they’re so distinctive and interesting that they’re worth seeking out and giving a try. One beer that is pretty widely available is Magic Hat’s Roxy Rolles. A healthy dose of Simcoe hops offers a very nice, earthy hop characteristic, different from any beer you likely have ever tried.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are some beers where hops might be balanced differently and given less prominence in different beers. I urge you to try a Scottish Ale to get a hint of a beer that doesn’t use any of the same grains, hops, or yeasts as a typical American Pilsener. A widely available commercial example is Belhaven Wee Heavy, which I think is a wonderful commercial example (though Scottish publicans will almost certainly differ – but then we can’t get their beer without taking a $4000 plane ride)

More about hops

Hops weren’t always used in beer. Instead, brewers used widely varying combinations of herbs, flowers, and other things indigenous to their locale to provide bitterness in the beers they produced. Why is bitterness desirable? Well, to balance the sweetness provided by the grains. You see, if there were no hops in your typical English Bitter, it would taste kinda like you took Maple Brown Sugar flavored Instant Oatmeal, put it in a bowl with some water for a few hours, and then strained, filtered, and chilled (and carbonated) the water. I’m not kidding.

Hops caught on quickly, though, quickly replacing every other form of bittering vegetation in beer. In addition to bitterness, hops also have both preservative and anti-bacterial qualities. In days before refrigeration, this meant that loading in the hops would allow beer to travel longer distances without spoiling. When the British needed to send beer to colonists in far away India, they added an abundance of hops to preserve the beer on the journey. They wound up producing a very distinctive ale still known today as “India Pale Ale”. The style didn’t originate in India — it was a result of the British sending beer to India. At that time, most beer was not heavily hopped.

Bitterness in beer is measured in IBUs (International Bittering Units). Some American craft brewers actually list the IBUs right on the bottle. A decently hopped American Pale Ale will probably have somewhere between 40-50 IBU. “Imperial” beers are typically higher, sometimes near 90-100 IBUs. As hops are a relative of the hemp plant, a beer with 90-100 IBUs has the potential to make you feel as though you have “cotton mouth”.

“Just Not a Beer Drinker”

Some people seem to defy your every move as a beer advocate. They won’t commit, or can’t explain, what it is they don’t like about beer. There are some perfectly understandable reasons for this:

They don’t want to admit that beer gives them horrible gas, abdominal pains, or headaches.

They don’t know how to label or describe the flavors they aren’t fond of.

They don’t want to get into a long discussion about how they have Celiac disease, or an intolerance for glutens created by wheat and barley products.

They think you’re weird and want to change the subject.

First: Do not underestimate the probability of #4.

There are a zillion chemical compounds in beer, some of which bother some people. Gas is caused by different things in beer: yeast, and bubbles. Bottle conditioned beers may not be high on their list of good beers to try if their gas is really out of hand. Abdominal pains can be caused by gas, so they fit that recommendation as well. Headaches are always a mystery, and unless someone actually enjoys beer and has recent onset of headaches, only when drinking beer, it’s probably best left alone. One reason people can get headaches from beer is that beer, like all alcoholic beverages, dehydrates the body (counterintuitive as it may seem). But if they say they get headaches ONLY when drinking beer, you might have to look to other things. I have not yet identified anything specific to beer that would lend itself to headaches, and what conditions need to exist, so I’m not much help there. Sorry.

People who don’t know how to describe what it is about beer that they don’t like aren’t uncommon, and there are lots of things peoples palates are sensitive to in beer that yours may not be. For example, Matt and I brew beer together. We both enjoy probably most styles of beer. However, we’ve brewed a couple of batches with slightly high phenol levels, potentially as a result of too much grain husk exposure in the mash. Whatever the reason, Matt can drink these beers without complaint, whereas I have to suffer through a pint of it. His palate just lumps the sort of bitter character in with the hop flavors, whereas to me it’s a completely different flavor that drives me bananas.

The best thing to do here is take note of the beers they’ve tried, and try to steer them in another direction. If they’ve tried BMC-style beers, Blue Moon, and Sam Adams, well, those are all really fizzy American beers, pretty light-bodied, and they all have flavors that can sit badly on one’s palate (the adjuncts in Bud, the coriander in Blue Moon, the yeast esters in Sam Adams). Try pointing them to beers that have cleaner or different yeast profiles, less fizz, and no adjuncts, like the aforementioned English bitters, Irish ales, or Scottish ales. You might also point them at more “pure” pilseners, such as Czechvar.

As for item #3, you’ll be happy to know that people with Celiac disease or other intolerances to gluten can drink beer made from a variety of other types of grain, the most commercially available being beer made from sorghum. This style has its roots in Africa, but has been marketed in the US as well. The most popular brand seems to be Red Bridge, which attempts to be Budweiser made from sorghum.

Beer of Last Resort

When all else fails, go for the gusto! Females who drink, but don’t drink beer, tend to really enjoy the Belgian fruit lambic beer. There are a variety of flavors, including peach, cherry, strawberry, apple, raspberry, and more. You might think that these are gimmicky beers targeting a female non-beer-drinker audience. Not so. These beers are very high quality beers, created by a process specific to the style, using yeast and fermentation conditions specific to the style. As a result, you’d be hard-pressed to find any beer that is similar to them in flavor, character, or quality. I’m not a huge fan of them myself, but it’s not because they’re not well made. Women who try them adore them.Those who don’t really hate fizz. They’re probably the only beers more highly carbonated than American Pilseners.

There are lots of other fruit beers that are not lambics, as well. Magic Hat’s #9 is a very nice ale with a very pleasant hint of apricot. Abita makes a beer called “Purple Haze”, which is a Raspberry Wheat beer. Pumpkin ales and spice ales are also popular in the fall months as “special edition” brews.

There are also lots of fantastically exotic or “dessert beers” that I sometimes can get people to try. Young’s Double Chocolate Stout is one. There are several chocolate stouts on the market. Brooklyn also makes a good one. There isn’t necessarily chocolate in a chocolate stout, by the way — the overall character of the beer is chocolatey, and you might even be fooled by the flavor, but it comes from highly-kilned malts used in the mash, perhaps along with yeast strains that accentuate the chocolate flavors through ester production.

Over the years, brewers have attempted to brew with seemingly every conceivable ingredient known to man. You can still find some of these radical brews, but generally only in brew pubs where they have a bit of license with the beers they brew. A few really great beers I’ve had have been made with hemp seeds, habenero peppers, caraway seeds, and watermelon.

15 comments to For People Who “Don’t Like Beer”

Great read. I am definitely a novice drinker. My wife and I both are. We have never liked beer…but beer as we know it is the american varieties (BMC as you put it). I don’t know what it is we don’t like about it. We are the type that say “Beer tastes like piss water”…so is there a beer you’d recommend for these symptoms? We usually do fruity mixed drinks or the “girly” malt beverages. I’d like to find something that i can drink (beer) that’s not fruity, but doesn’t taste like the “BMC” beers I’ve tried. Recommend me something!

My husband loves beer. He drinks all kinds, we’ve been t ale houses all over. I’ve taken at least a sip of every new beer he’s gotten and I just don’t like it. There’s a bitter flavor that I cannot tolerate. I always make a “bitter beer” face after the sip. I’ve tried various lambics, I’ve had Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, Guinness, Purple Haze, etc. I’ve gone places where I can get a tray of 5-6 small beers only to end up giving them all away. I just do not like beer and it’s not for a lack of trying (something I still do and my husband finds hilarious). The closest I’ve come to drinking a whole beer is to have a shandy. I really wish I did because everyone I know drinks beer and we sometimes hang out at a place called “The Beer Shed” which serves nothing but beer. So I sit there, sober and thirsty because I don’t like beer.

Who knew? I am one of those females who think that beer tastes like swamp water. It doesn’t seem to matter what brand – from cheap to Sam Adams – they all end up tasting like nasty, tainted, fizzy water to me. My husband is a beer drinker, and can tell me which ones taste better than others to get me to try them. No matter, they all taste the same. Yuck! I never knew that there were so many varieties until I read this article! Fruit flavored beer? Something to think about while I enjoy my frozen margarita…

Great Article. I am one of those “people who don’t like beer”. I always associated it to that one time when I was six years old and I grabbed a can of beer off the coffee table instead of the soda next to it. Only to discover it was warm beer left over from the party my parents had the night before and what mixed with,I would find out later in life, old bong water. Not exactly the most pleasant experience for a six year old. The down side is, I never seemed to enjoy beer like everyone else. The upside is, I rarely ever drink alcohol and I never had the urge to try elicit drugs!

I’ve recently started ordering mixed drinks when with my friends with the Long Island Iced Tea being my favorite.

I don’t drink a lot so I always get what I know I like which limits my exposure.

I haven’t figured out if its the fizz or the bitterness. Something full and dark sounds and looks appealing to me but not sure where to start. You’ve given me some good advice and I’ll see if I can put it to some use.

Just came across this article, and thank you for it! Your passion for beer is obvious. I’ve been loyal to wine for some time and just started exploring the beer world a couple of months ago. I am not too fond of IPAs – they taste pretty bitter to me. Am I correct in identifying the bitterness as a result of hops? I tend to prefer wheaty-tasting beers that are rich, not bitter, but not so heavy as something like Guinness. Would love some recommendations or, at least, a better way of describing what I like!

I was elated to find this article! I purposefully did a “Bing” search for “beer for beer haters,” and was shocked to find this! (Who knew I wasn’t the only beer hater still willing to find a good beer?) I have tried a chocolate beer–although I’m unsure of the brand–and still found the experience to be less than appealing. I still wish I did enjoy it, though, because it seems beer drinkers are so enthusiastic about their beer of choice. I adore wine, wine coolers, mixed drinks…well you get the picture. My husband, on the other hand, lets me drink to my heart’s content and opts for juice! (Ehh…) I say all that to say I think I’ll keep looking and maybe even attend the beer festival I found online for my state (SC). Any additional suggestions for a “girly girl” who doesn’t mind the fizz but hates the bitter flavors when I go to the festival?

Thank you SO MUCH! I’ve tried the typical bud, coors light, heineken, and you’re right, I didn’t like them. In fact, I hated “beer”. I’ve stuck to mixed drinks and I love fruity drinks, but I hate that people feel the need to label anything like that a “girl’s drink”. I tried a sip of Guinness and it actually tasted great! Which is funny, because to a friend of mine that claims to like beer, he told me hated it.

I fall under the haven’t found a beer I like. I have had key stone bud lite dosaces (I know I didnt spell it right) pale blue ribbon Sierra Nevada Guinness hinikin bluemoon fat or flat tire. Is there any youmight suggest I try or should I just stick to whiskey

I am one of those people (men) that do not like beer. I don’t like the bitterness, I am pretty sure that I don’t like hops as well. I feel like the beer tastes like I would imagine piss water does.(Hell, as gross as it sounds, I would say piss water would taste better.)
But I am not one of those people who are unwilling to try different types and styles of beers. Ask my friends, I will try any beer and every week I get my normal Argry Orchards Hard Cider or WoodChuck hard cidar, some scotch, vodka, or rum, and Then I will pick out of the hundreds of beers that my local large liquer store has available. I always try something new, and have tried ales, stouts, IPA, lagers, and so forth. I am not sure how to describe it, but I just can’t seem to find anything I even partially like. I have even tried Mead, and even though it has a similar to beer taste as it is wine brewed like beer, I won’t say I loved it, but I did like it.
Are there any suggestions you can give. I’ll be honest I have sort of a sweet tooth, and like things like Smirnoff Ice drinks and mixed drinks, but I feel weird around my buddies being the only one who pretty much “hates” beer. I don’t even like the smell. Please, if you could help with some suggestions or anything, I would greatly appreciate it.

I want to drink beer – it’s more convenient than running to the over-priced liquor store, but I haven’t found anything I liked. Normally, I’m a vodka person with Coca Cola chasers – the Coke’s acidic nature and carbonation surprisingly makes all of the taste go away. Huge fan of carbonation, so I doubt that’s why I can’t stand BMC. Tried warm and cold, I dislike the taste. Tried some Canadian beer (can’t recall the name of, but it had pictograms under the cap for your buzzed pleasure) and that was okay in ITTY BITTY sips – like freak-of-nature-Stacy-what-the-hell-are-you-doing chipmunk sips. Tried Guinness and my stomach CRINGED instantly. I’ve tried some Raspberry beer from a local brewer – liked the taste and then was sick for 3 days afterwards.

Is there an alternative to the lambic beer? As much fun as alcohol is whether to get drunk or to be paired with food I am a broke person with a limited budget. :’(

Being broke shouldn’t be much of an issue — a six-pack of really good beer is still typically pretty cheap compared to a bottle of vodka. In my experience, there’s such an enormous variety of beer available for $9 or less per six pack there’s no real reason to pay any more than that.

There really isn’t a ‘lambic alternative’. There are lots of fruit beers, but I’d like to know the name of the raspberry beer that made you sick. Typically anything that would cause someone to be sick like that actually *can’t* live in beer, so it could point to an allergic reaction. I’d want to know what that was before recommending any other fruit beers.

I have three basic suggestions for you. I hope they’re useful:

1. Try a hefeweizen. Sam Adams and Widmer are two breweries whose beers are available in all parts of the US and make respectable and respectably-priced examples of the style.

2. Try Sierra Nevada Pale ale. I didn’t hear anything about disliking the bitterness in any of the beers you mentioned, but BMC has a really generic sort of “blah” bitterness that, to me (and others) just tastes like bad beer. Sierra Nevada is widely available and inexpensive, and has a hop character that’s really fantastic. I’ve had friends who’ve tried it for the first time and called the hoppy character “fruity”, and that’s what they liked about it. All palates are different – so give it a shot.

3. Think of different beer styles like you would different foods. If you run across some food you’ve never tried, you’d probably be game for giving it a shot. Do the same with beer. If someone has a beer that looks interesting, give it a go. There are beer styles that I typically don’t like, but I keep trying different brands of them anyway, and sometimes it works out. My dirty secret is that I actually dislike almost every beer brewed in Belgium, which runs afoul of any self-respecting beer snob. I keep trying them anyway, and eventually I’ve found a couple I can drink, and one that I really love. Just keep an open mind, and eventually you’ll stumble across something perfect for you.

If you don’t like bitterness and hops, IPAs and even most American pale ales are probably not going to be for you. The US has, over the past 10 years or so, shifted its collective palate toward very heavy-handed use of hops, so a lot of microbreweries have taken what were originally rather mild British styles and pounded hops into them. As such, pale ales and IPAs made by US micros are almost definitely not your thing. Anything made in the US with the word “Imperial” in it is also not gonna work for you, as often this is just code for “extreme”, which in the US usually just means “really really hoppy”.

All of that aside, the rest is really an open field. It’s not uncommon to be able to find half a dozen commercial examples of a given style these days, all with truly unique takes on the style, emphasizing different characteristics of the style, or emulating different recipes of historical examples of the style, or taking the style in a new direction. You at least have some experience in trying different styles, so one way to go about things is to pick the general style you hated the least, and see if another brand of the same style is better. If not, do some comparisons: why did you hate that style less than, say, a stout? Why did you hate it less than a pale ale? Would you like it better if it had something you tasted in some other beer? What style was that? Take notes!

If you have a sweet tooth, there are definitely beers out there for you. It’s just a matter of which “sweet” beer flavors you like. For example, if you like a more “caramel-y” sweetness, check out Belhaven Wee Heavy, maybe Old Speckled Hen, perhaps a Bock (Shiner is the only US example I can think of — it’s originally a German style), and a non-US brown ale of some kind. Some beers that describe themselves as “malty” or “malt-forward” beers have a rather nice, smooth sweetness to them.

If you like a more fruity, lively sweetness, there are tons of beers made with fruit on the shelves that might work out just fine. There are too many of these to name, but a few are Banana Bread, Sam Adams Cherry Wheat (which I think tastes just like Cherry Coke), Abita Purple Haze (Raspberries! Technically a malt liquor, but nobody seems to realize that, or care), Ephemere (Apple, but beer, not cider), and Magic Hat #9 (Apricot).

There are also “chocolate” stouts and porters, smoked beers (Stone Smoked Porter is highly recommended and has a wine-like quality to it), and various Belgian beers that have flavors ranging from candy sweet to peppery spice.

I urge you to keep trying. When you find something you like, report back!